And not even. I reported a new issue about TrueHD audio tracks on iPad more than a month ago and I’m still waiting for any kind of acknowledgement or response.
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Every time I open this new “experience” it starts on the Plex streaming page, even if both of my available servers are both online. I have to select a library and go back to see my “continue watching” and newly added to the library items.
The downloads (formerly Plex sync) continues to be broken since 2014.. why am I not surprised that Plex didn’t fix this with the new experience. This one feels like the old experience, always broken.
Photo sync is still strongly missed.
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The new UI is pretty poorly designed IMO. Let me provide my feedback:
- When you first open the app, the ‘Select User’ is at the top of the screen, out of reach. I thought perhaps rotating the device would place it somewhere reachable…rotate does not work on a phone and on a tablet it still places the selection in the top-left (for some reason). Looks really awkward.
- When you log in, the ‘Browse Libraries’ are kind of squished into the middle of the content lists posters, using pill buttons at a scale and style not found anywhere else in the app. Again, this is just awkward design and visually abrasive.
- I would just allow the libraries to be pinned to the bottom bar individually, this would add far more cohesion to the home screen. Or, have the libraries above ‘Continue Watching’ styled the same as the buttons in the library view.
- The bottom bar (I only have Home and Libraries here) buttons are spaced at the left and right edge of the bar, with a huge amount of negative space between them. This is a strange choice and should either be spaced equally along the bar, centred on the bar or left or right on the bar.
- When you click into ‘Libraries’, you have (what looks like) a drop-down, but it actually activates another pop-up menu along the bottom of the device. Having the user constantly moving up and down the device to interact makes it jarring to navigate.
- Next down are another row of pill buttons to navigate the library views. These are OK, but they are not scaled or styled the same as the pill buttons on the home screen. Some constancy here would go a long way to a better experience.
I will add further comments on the actual functionality that has been removed in another post.
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@medianode what device are you using and what app version are you on?
Also do you know the version number of the PMS you’re accessing? It wiill be something like 1.41.X something where the X is the important bit.
Apps are Android - version 2025.16.0
PMS is my local server - version 1.41.7.9784
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Which model device(s) are you using?
As bad as the apps are in their current state, what you’re describing and experiencing is fairly different from everyone else.
But the library menu is still vertical, though.
My only grief is, that you need to long press the library button instead of being able to swipe it from the side/tap the Hamburger. And that the mechanic of favorites is account wide and not device specific anymore.
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Seems like you have none of your libraries marked as favorite then?
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I am using a Samsung Tab S9+ on the OneUI 7.0 Android 15 and a Poco F3 with LineageOS 22.2 Android 15
I am confused by you saying my experience is different, how do you mean? The layout of the app is the layout in the current version right?
Yes I’m on iOS and I can confirm all of your points. I’m confused what the server version or device model has to do with anything.
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For example, I don’t see this on my iPad and I don’t recall seeing other Android users reporting anything similar:
I would definitely call this a bug — if you could report this in a separate thread, I will point the devs at it. (As an aside, this helped me discover a different login bug as well).
In the meantime, if it works for you use case, a work around would be to go to Settings / Account / Automatically Sign In and toggle that on. This will skip the Select User screen and take you right to your Home Screen.
Also, I’ve never known a Plex app where the Home Screen (or any screen) would rotate on a phone (Android or Apple) like it does on a tablet. Except of course for video playback.
They are also used similarly on the Live TV page for both local TV tuners and Plex Channels. These are also the same as you mention regarding the individual library screen:
So I think they’re consistent as “local navigation” or sub-navigation elements.
Regarding:
Well, “global navigation” has to go somewhere. It used to be on the left side, now it’s on the bottom. I don’t find it particularly jarring once I overcame my muscle memory. However, I can understand that everyone has different personal preferences.
What I meant by this, is that the user icons (before you select a user to enter the PIN) are positioned at the top of the screen, not the middle, so this makes them hard to reach one-handed on the device. It is just poor UX design, if the the icons where centered it would make more sense.
I would never choose convenience over security, so automatically logging into to anything (especially a mobile device) is a no-go for me.
Even rotating on the tablet moves the user selection to the top left in landscape mode… a very odd UI design choice.
This is not true, the pill button design is not consistent across the pages/screens. They are scaled differently and have different shading. And, as I mentioned, on the home screen they are awkwardly placed amongst the rows of posters. Again, just an odd design choice.
Selecting ‘Libraries’ on the bottom bar takes you to either a grouped recommended view or a browse view of a single library. To get to another library, you have to move to the op of the screen where the library name is. There is a little down arrow there. You click on it, expecting a menu and then you have to move back down to the bottom of the screen where the menu actually appears. Again, strange UX design choice.
You should try avoid having users looking and moving around a screen to find where/what their interaction triggered, it is jarring and intuitive. If you click on a menu, you assume that the menu would appear somewhere near where you interacted with it, not in a completely different location.
It would be like walking up to a Vending machine selecting an item and your product was dispensed from another machine behind you.
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I have also brought this up. The horizontal carousel does not function well aesthetically or technically, especially if you have more than 3-4 libraries. It’s also redundant to the Libraries button on the home row/chin at the bottom of the screen. Between the humongus chin and the carousel scroll we are losing a TON of screen realestate.
What does make sense, and has existed for a very long time, is a simple hamburger menu in the upper left of the screen. It leaves libraries hidden and allows access with just two taps. They’re also much easier to access with just one hand whereas the carousel almost requires two hands, or at least switching hands.
Poor UX design and changing for the sake of change does not equal a new and improved experience. We are literally begging Plex to revert to the old experience and they are completely ignoring their paying customers. Instead of taking constructive feedback in the beginning the resulted to gaslighting in the form of “you’re not using it correctly.”
The Plex forums have begun to devolve into Jellyfin support forums and that is an absolutely horrible look for Plex. I desperatly want to stick with Plex. It is (was) the best around. I have no desire to start over now after carefully cureating my libraries for 15 years but I may have no choice soon.
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Adding insult to injury, who in their right mind releases an app that is maybe 10% feature complete (by their own admission) and yet most of those core features still don’t work! The vast majority of users can’t even play a movie/tv show in this new app because it just stutters, if it even plays at all.
This is 100% the new app and nothing else. Every single client I have that is NOT iOS/Android works perfectly fine on the old apps. Everyone who has reverted their mobile app says it still works as it used to.
Plex digging their feet in the sand and just saying, “we’ll get it working eventually” is NOT OKAY. This is the poorest of poor customer support. It would be the same as if I bought a new car from a dealership with nothing working and they said, “well keep paying for it and eventually we’ll get it running.”
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A bit of progress to report for my use case in new app version 2025.16 (iOS). Downloads appear to be much faster now. Previous app version I was getting about 1.5mb/sec. Now downloads are 22 mb/sec. Download quality can be selected as Original, high, medium, or low. Still no additional information on what each of these does to the downloaded file. What is the difference in bit rate or resolution? Original, High, and Medium quality all download as Original. This seems strange, and I would expect High and Medium to transcode using high or medium settings. Low is the only setting that will transcode. Maybe it depends on the source? The test source for these are HD H.265 files. More information on how this worked would be useful.
This sort of sentiment makes me deeply uncomfortable (sorry for picking you out @supersecret). I’m seeing lots of “The vast majority”, “almost everyone”, “it doesn’t work for anyone. There are 1100 comments on this forum post. A lot of people are having issues, but not all the same. No-one has any evidence, but what they’re seeing themselves and what people are posting on the forums
Plex has millions of users, so a very small subset have posted here. Does that mean that the app works for everyone else. No. But there have been very few stories, even in the tech press about this “New Experience” which suggests that many people aren’t having the issue we’re seeing, or don’t care.
I don’t like the new UI and the download functionality is really poor, especially compared to the old app. The old download functionality worked for me reliably. But otherwise the app allows me to play content from my server, so THAT part of it works.
Its a crap “upgrade”, poorly conceived, poorly executed, rushed out, but when posting, can people keep to what you’re experiencing without speculating about what others are seeing.
Oh and anyone demanding that they put the old app back in the next 48 hours or “I’m going to JellyFin…” they don’t care. They’ve made their decision and I’d be amazed (based on their track record over the last 3 years) if they were even thinking about it, never mind doing it.
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It wasn’t originally there. It’s only been added in the last few releases because people said they wanted something on the home screen to select a library.
Long press on the button. You’ll get the library select menu pop up.
Anyone from plex willing to comment to the fact the legacy android beta client just got updated ?
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Yeah was wondering that myself.
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That is totally fair @geoffairey. I have worked in IT for a very long time and my experience has proven to me at least that there are a LOT of users who will never speak up. They will just take the good and the bad they’re given. Maybe they will quietly look for a new alternative, maybe they will just give up and purchase a ton of streaming services.
All I know is the majority of feedback I have seen on these forums since the “update” was released is that the app doesn’t really work for the most basic functions and the UX/UI is cumbersome and confusing.
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